Replicating information may be a preventative security action that may hasten recovery efforts following malicious attacks on information systems. Backing-up information may be a challenging, complex, and important operation, particularly when information retention systems continuously replicate source storage devices from which virtual machines are cloned. Cloning virtual machines and replicating the cloned virtual machines to target storage devices takes time. These delays may lead to backup digital information for the cloned machines being stale, thus necessitating a subsequent full backup of the cloned virtual machines that may add further delays, affect backup digital information integrity, waste time, waste processor cycles, waste network bandwidth, and/or waste power.